America's No. 1 immediate goal should be universal health care by 2024

[Suburbia]

Period. I agree with Bernie Sanders on this. Shameful that U.S. does not have universal health care. This I would happily pay taxes on.

Get it done. I don't care of you are an Republican or a Democrat.

[Crumpets]

Only if it includes comprehensive contraceptive coverage and pregnancy planning. #BothSidesDoIt #BronzThread

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Environmental and family sustainability; military readiness.

[Dr. Arch]

Period. I agree with Bernie Sanders on this. Shameful that U.S. does not have universal health care. This I would happily pay taxes on.

Get it done. I don't care of you are an Republican or a Democrat.

+1,000,000

[Orser67]

To me, the three biggest issues are universal healthcare, global warming/energy, and the debt. So I'd pass a carbon tax to fund healthcare, and then use the healthcare bill to curb health spending, which over time could/should help the national debt.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

So I'd pass a carbon tax to fund healthcare,

so the healthcare of the country would depend on continued emissions of CO2 to remain solvent?

[Dr. Arch]

So I'd pass a carbon tax to fund healthcare,

so the healthcare of the country would depend on continued emissions of CO2 to remain solvent?

Safe D West Virginia 2024?

[Orser67]

So I'd pass a carbon tax to fund healthcare,

so the healthcare of the country would depend on continued emissions of CO2 to remain solvent?

I'm not proposing to forever link the two like FICA taxes and Social Security. I'm talking about a bill that is revenue neutral over a ten-year period.

[gerritcole]

joke thread

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I feel like Dems are a little too focused on healthcare. Obamacare has gotten us 90% of the way towards what we want, and there are dozens of overlooked issues out there.

[Famous Mortimer]

Good universal healthcare is impossible without first controlling the border/stop increasing the free rider population. Or else we end up like Mexico, which has universal healthcare in theory but private healthcare in practice, since the state can't afford to pay the doctors enough and you have to bribe them to get treatment.

[dead0man]

what comes after trillions?  Don't worry about it, we'll all know soon enough.

[MarkD]

MY number 1 goal is the subject in my signature: we need a constitutional amendment to be proposed and ratified that rewrites Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to make its meaning narrower and clearer.

[Frodo]

I have to say that if Obamacare survives to the next Democratic trifecta, it will be the toughest health care system in the world, having endured years of what basically amounts to stress-testing by a political party hostile to its very existence sworn to its elimination.  

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[ProgressiveCanadian]

joke thread post

[publicunofficial]

I like to think Bronz made this thread after getting a hospital bill for the first time.

[Izzyeviel]

The UK perspective: Universal Healthcare is great but: You need a government fully committed to running and constantly improving it otherwise it all goes to s*** as we are finding out under the current regime. (am I allowed to swear on here? hi!)

[Izzyeviel]

The UK perspective: Universal Healthcare is great but: You need a government fully committed to running and constantly improving it otherwise it all goes to s*** as we are finding out under the current regime. (am I allowed to swear on here? hi!)

Why do the Tories keep getting blamed for creating the structural problems that the NHS has faced since inception?

I don't know what it was like before the 90's but in short; lack of funding and will to implement things that will make the NHS run better.

For instance, when Labour were in power, they did a great job, threw lots of resources at it, always sought to constantly improve it - for instance they introduced waiting times; you could turn up at A&E and be dealt within 4 hours. (Normally!)

So far the Tories have reduced funding and apart from a ludicrous scheme to have 24 hours outpatients appointments they've proposed nothing. We're crying out for nurses and doctors; Labour introduced financial incentives and increased pay; Tories removed them and lowered it. We could be losing over 20,000 EU nurses and doctors because of Brexit and the Tories have done nothing to counter that.

So yeah, if you have universal healthcare, both parties need to be fully committed to it. The moment the government starts ignoring it, it goes downhill.

[parochial boy]

NHS spending increased by about 7% p.a. under Blair, which is faster spending growth than pretty much any other country in the world that I can think of.

Despite this, you are claiming that an A&E wait time of 4 hours is somehow an accomplishment. In Michigan, the state I currently reside in, the average is 19 minutes and wait times of more than a couple hours have been known to trigger malpractice lawsuits.

The NHS is fundamentally broken at its core and is an embarrassment compared to other universal healthcare systems like those found in the Netherlands and Germany.

Oh this is a bit embarrasing for you, the "4 hours" was not only a target (not an average), but you have actually failed to compare like to like.

The 4 hour target referred to the amount of time between arriving at hospital and being discharged, which was the case for 95% of patients. A quick google search suggests that most hospitals in Michigan have an average performance of around 2-3 hours for this metric, which will be broadly similar to what it is in the UK.

Of course, US healthcare spending per capita is, was, remains more than twice what it is in the UK - with the net result that 10% of Americans don't have healthcare coverage and substantially more don't actually have adequate healthcare cover. Beyond that, if you don't cherry pick beyond certain data points, or misread statistics that don't actually compare like to like, the NHS provides equally effective care to the US system, less good in some areas, but better in others (such as dementia or end of life care).

The NHS is of course, consistently rated as one of the most efficient in the world, considering the level of resource it has -  the opposite US system which is shockingly bad given that it runs n 17% of GDP for virtually no difference in actual performance. So if one system has groteqsue structural problems, it certainly ain't the NHS matey boy.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

joke thread

Joke poster.

[MasterJedi]

Healthcare would allow the country to begin focusing on other things. If people, especially the poor can get healthcare it will drastically decrease how we subsidize people who get sick right now so it would lower costs, allow them to actually become healthy, have more money in their pockets as it's no longer something they get raped paying or have to rely on employers to pay. All around probably the most important thing to do first.